From where certain cooks shop to detailed maps/pictures of the food itself the idea of food-maps offers compelling insights into a certain culture. For an archeologist looking at a food map, 100 or even a 1000 years from now, what kind of information would they be able to convey from it other than what’s already directly stated? Could they infer things like socioeconomic status or reach a detail conclusion on gender roles for example?
It’s an ordinary sunny Sunday morning and I wake up just in time to watch my father leave for work. He rushes around looking for his uniform and places $10 on the table. In a blink of an eye, he is gone and I am left alone in my house until well into the evening. I go about my day, by doing the usual tasks: a bowl of cold milk and lucky charms cereal, some homework followed by countless internet distractions. Lunch time comes around and I am starved. My stomach grumbles loudly as I grab the keys, the $10 and venture out for food.
There are many fast food restaurants around Jamaica, Queens but my favorite one is Bamboo Garden Chinese Food. From fried rice with broccoli, jumbo shrimp and brown sauce to spicy hunan chicken with white rice and vegetables, every option on the menu is packed with spices and flavor. I pondered over what to get as I made my way to the store. The store is situated between a furniture store that sells merchandise at low cost and a liquor store where men of Spanish descent sit outside, sipping from bottles in crinkled brown paper bags and whistling at any female that happened to walk by.
The store’s signage has a rip through it. When I walked in, the bright red tables and chairs flashed my eyes. Overall, the space is small. There are about 6 tables in total. The store was empty when I walked in. There was an Asian women, who smiled as I approached the counter. I asked her if the lunch special was still available and she politely told me I was a few minutes late. I could see the entirety of the kitchen from my position at the counter. I saw heavy smoke rising from a large, pan and workers place new contents into a large batter of oil. I ordered the pork lo mein and waited for my dish. It was a fast process, the food took less than five minutes to arrive. I handed her $10 and she gave me $5 back in cash.
The pork lo mein, was deliciously satisfying. For a little box, it was amazingly filling. The shredded bits of roasted pork went well with the thick noodles that were saturated with the heavy gravy like taste of brown sauce. While the food taste was appealing, Bamboo Garden Chinese Food itself is not. It is located in a poor quality neighborhood. There are strange and perhaps even dangerous men lurking around the corners of the street where it’s located, making female customers hesitant to come in and order.
It’s typically empty and I don’t find that all so surprising. Who would want to sit down and eat at such a run-down establishment? The store is deteriorating as evident by the poor signage. It has a small space and low-quality food. How long have they been using the same oil? The kitchen space is small and visible to customers at the counter making it all the more appalling. I could hear the loud clatter of pots and pans, and the screeching voices of Chinese dialect as I stood waiting for my order. The atmosphere is thick and heavily scented with the smoke arising from the pans. However it’s employees are respectful and the ordering process is fast. For a busy college student on the go with who wasn’t looking to fine dine and wine, it’s good enough.
I come from a middle class family. Both my mother and father work, six days a week, nine hours a day. They are relatively recent immigrants, who came to America for a better education for their children. And while that dream is met, that dream doesn’t come so cheap. Raising a child is expensive. Rent is expensive. The electricity bills, water pills and gas bills all are expensive. College bills are astronomically expensive. As a result they spend most days working to support our family and do not have time to cook most nights. I can’t recall the last time we sat down as a family and had a meal together. Disregarding meal times, we don’t spend that much time together at all. My parent’s careers take up most of their time.
While we aren’t dirt poor, we aren’t glamorously rich either. We can’t afford healthy, fresh, organic food on a daily basis. As a result most nights it’s deep fried, tasty food bought from a shady Chinese store down the block. This results in many health illnesses, as evident by my parent’s and my brother’s growing obesity. This trend of workaholic parents who don’t have time to cook a healthy home-cooked meal, isn’t limited to solely my household, rather it is a nation-wide and a soon to be globalized-problem. One in five deaths had been linked to obesity in 2013 and this rate is only growing. It seems as if the black death has another form.
While food is known to bring people closer together, it can sometimes have the opposite effect. Fast food has come to symbolize that. It represents the fast-paced structure of today’s industrialized societies where no one has time to sit down and enjoy a meal together. It has also been the leading cause of health illnesses and even deaths. My parent’s identity as middle-class workaholics has had devastating effects to both their relationship with me and my brother as well as their health.
This chapter in Gastropolis really highlights how eating out is such an integrated part of American culture. In fact, every type of social hang out most often includes eating at a particular restaurant as part of the plan. What intrigues me most was how, the authors stated “New York food is American food”.
When one things of “American” food they think of hot dog carts and hamburgers, which are avidly sold throughout New York City. They don’t think of other states, such as Gumbo made mostly in Southern Louisiana.
While the authors do mention how New York has a lot of authentic food and a wide variety of it, they don’t explain why the concept of “American” food is “New York” food. Why is that so? Why don’t people think of Gumbo as American food or other dishes?
In The Health Toll of Immigration, the primary reason for obesity was because of the availability of cheap food that taste good at a low price. The passage makes connection to those recently immigrated with low incomes, but as someone who is the child of two working parents, I know that the reason isn’t always because of low income, it could be because of the workaholic standard in America leads to less time devoted to nutritious, healthy home-cooked meals.
Will this ever stop? It seems like a huge crisis, because there’s a TON of influx of immigrants, who end up with blue-collar jobs, as well as many people in the middle class who just can’t devote the time to healthy eating. Is it possible to solve this problem? Or will deaths due to diabetes and obesity be on an exponential rise from here on?
In “But is it Authentic” by Lisa Heldke, many important points are brought up. But one struck out to me the most, was when she associated a certain type of food to something as grand as a marriage. She implies that Anne, saved her marriage with her Italian American husband by learning to like Garlic. Can food really have this much of an impact? Or is Heldke exaggerating? Could liking a certain item mean the difference between a marriage and a divorce?
Another point that struck out to me was when she asked if food is an art, and states that a work of art happens when there is interaction between a product and a viewer. I’d say in this definition food is an art. But could it be a higher form of art? Since food is something one taste there will always be a reaction. It takes physical effort to chew something and ingest it. Whereas something like a painting one could skim over and not pay that much attention to and move on to the next painting, as is what happens in art museums.
In Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement, the most interesting fact I’ve learned was how immigrant families actually really enjoyed their visit on Ellis Island. I’ve been preached about the corruption of the United States, since I hit middle school. I never knew about the abundance of food on the islands so much so, that the immigrants actually wept at the thought of returning back home and leaving Ellis Island. Why is it that in history books this issue isn’t covered? I’ve heard many things ranging from how immigrants didn’t find the city of gold that they were dreaming of to how they were maliciously sent back to their home land, but never something as positive as this.
Another thing, that caught my attention was how neighbors in tenements were so friendly with each other. They looked after each other and in the words of the author, “people around you grasped your situation with perfect clarity and gave what they could.” What happened to this attitude? How did the New York “rough” attitude come about from something as close as this? I guess, perhaps the switch to more private forms of living could be an answer. But was the change that dramatic? Could urban settlement serve up to mean people? Why New York? Many other nations and states went through urbanization, but they didn’t go through such a change.
